


Mistakes Precede Growth

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 06:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19312882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: In hindsight, the victory tastes bitter, like a mortgage loan she’d defaulted on after showing off her fancy new house to everyone she knew.





	Mistakes Precede Growth

**Author's Note:**

> brief mention of past teppei/riko
> 
> spoilers for last game/replace
> 
> for dw user stariceling, prompt is the title

Riko cancels practice the whole week before training camp. It’s unprecedented, yes, and inconsistent with how hard she’s been driving the team lately--but that’s exactly why they need the time off. People can’t exercise all the time; that’s one of the first things she’d learned observing her father at work. It’s not something she’d really put to use before now, but she’s made too many mistakes, and she’s not going to make the same ones over again.

That’s another thing her father had taught her, from the time she’d been barely big enough to hold a basketball. It’s okay to try something and screw up. It’s okay to screw up multiple times, just as long as you don’t make the exact same mistake twice. That shows you’re not paying attention or not learning, or not trying hard enough--expecting it to work based on luck is a shot in the dark. Pushing her players to the brink, again and over again, driving her starters until they can barely move, is too risky of a gamble.

Riko could get away with it, and get away with ignoring her better instincts, when she had a real ace or two, Kagami or Teppei, up her sleeve. She could push them until their legs gave out, and they’d do it because they’re fucking crazy about basketball, because their desire to win matches hers, because they know as they go the team goes. She could get away with it, and did, had convinced herself that since they said it was okay to push them that far that it was. 

Kagami holds no ill will towards her, though he has every right to. But Teppei, at a good hospital, undergoing intense physical rehab on his knee, does. She can see it on his face over their blurry video calls, and he means for her to see it (Teppei has always known how to pull his punches just so, and that’s one of the many reasons why they broke up--though, now, it’s hard to imagine them being together in the first place). He was the one who had ultimately decided on his particular operation, on coming back and pushing himself, but Riko knew what he was getting into. She could have mitigated it, pulled him back so he didn’t wreck his knee quite so much, quite so fast, but she’d put all of her options and hopes on one half-court shot that had happened to go in. She’d let him fuck up his other knee too, because he’d had to rely on it so much--all for a trophy and a victory.

It had felt really fucking good. But now, in hindsight, the victory tastes bitter, like a mortgage loan she’d defaulted on after showing off her fancy new house to everyone she knew. 

And now she doesn’t have Teppei, and she doesn’t have Kagami. Mitobe had struggled shaking off the rust--he’d been benched half the season for Teppei when he could have, should have, been playing. Fukuda and Kawahara have, between them, not even a whole game’s worth of minutes played. Furihata’s been falling further behind on the drills because he’s been attempting to coach Yagi every day and Yagi himself is still not remotely in shape. 

That leaves Hyuuga, Izuki, Koganei, Tsuchida, Kuroko, and Asahina--Riko’s run a team of six players before, and it didn’t exactly work. And what will the team be next year? She may not be coaching it, but it’s her responsibility to leave behind something that continued. She owes it to her yearmates, at least. Perhaps she had been wrong to work the kids who’d showed up the first day as hard as she did. Maybe some of them will show up again next year. Maybe there are some kids left in middle school who are interested in the possibility of Seirin, still the reigning winter cup champion. 

The thought weighs heavily as they approach their first scrimmage in training camp. At least, with this, all of them will be playing nearly the whole time. It will be grossly uneven, but that’s part of the point. It only exposes how grossly uneven the team is, and how Riko hasn’t been coaching them to better make up for it. She tosses up the tipoff and gets out of the way.

Fukuda beats Mitobe; he’s been sprouting up like a seedling transplanted to a large, empty pot, the tallest on the team now, though he’s still getting used to his body. He passes the ball up to Kuroko, who makes a clean of his own to Kawahara, who takes a shot from the outside and airballs it. Tsuchida grabs the rebound, and Kawahara shakes it off much more easily than he does when he misses a shot in a game. It’s the low pressure, maybe, but in other practices and unofficial matches Kawahara’s acted the same way. 

Maybe he’d stopped putting the pressure on himself when Riko was focusing on the other players. He’d gotten better, but she can’t take any credit for it--negative credit, maybe, for not giving him the experience, and not trusting him. Or maybe this gym, away from school, where it’s not likely Riko will sub in Yagi for him, seems like it has less pressure.

This isn’t like her; she should be putting the pressure on--but that doesn’t always work. That doesn’t always bring out the best in people. There are other ways, too; there are things this team has been missing. She thinks about Teppei’s voice, encouraging them all to have fun before every game--sincere or no, isn’t that why they play basketball?

And it’s no fun if you can’t win, and you can’t win for very long if your plan is to overuse your heavy hitters. Maybe in a video game, but even then that’s poor strategy.

Kawahara steals the ball back from Hyuuga, passes it down to Asahina and nets an assist on his long two from just inside the line. Maybe this team’s in better shape than she’d thought.


End file.
